Design is everywhere. In our walls, in our hands, in the clothes on our backs and the cars that we drive. Design is safety and ingenuity and efficiency. But above all else: Design is the blending of art, science, and common sense. Throughout the course of this class, I've come to realize that so much of design comes down to a delicate balancing act between being practical, functional, safe, and interesting. Your audience can change and grow with time, and a good design should be able to adapt to that. Functionality and practicality come into play when the design must do a task in a certain way, but an uninteresting design will fade into obscurity. Not every design has to be artful and creative, but behind every design there was an artist, carefully crafting every aspect and detail until it was just so. Some choose to add color or flair, some choose to stick to the beaten path, others try to blend in with the passing trends. Nearly every design in existence has had to hold again...
These are the results from the Hopper Lite design challenge, both for my initial design as well as the swap and make assignment with Chris's design. Below is the prototype for the frog design I initially came up with, which lost its spring after a few trials and could barely hop two inches. Below is the prototype I came up with for the catapult design based on the hopping motion of the Pixar Lamp. I made two versions of this design, one with a stationary base leg and one with a mobile base leg. Shown below is the photo of the mobile base leg version, which was found to launch farther thanks to the extra movement caused by the base leg snapping forward mid-air after launch. I ran several tests on my prototypes and recorded all of them, below is an example clip of my most successful trial with the mobile base leg prototype.